Costa Rica: Culture Creates Opportunities for Young People.

• Author: Lopez, Manuel Obregon
• Position: 2011 INTER-AMERICAN YEAR OF CULTURE OUR CULTURES, OUR FUTURE - Essay

"The Inter-American Year of Culture celebrates the diverse cultures of the Americas and promotes the central role that culture plays in economic, social, and human development in all communities"

Since i970, Costa Rica has been successfully connecting policies and programs in the two areas of Culture and Youth. Young people between the ages of 15 and 35 are the largest population group in the country. In this article, Costa Rica's Minister of Culture and Youth, Manuel Obregón López a musician and composer by profession, tells us about some of the ministry's cultural programs that ate focused on youth and how these programs are contributing to the development of the country. He also provides us with testimonies from some of the beneficiaries.

C ulture, equity, and social inclusion are concepts that we have tried to include in activities to increase the quality of life of young people in Costa Rica while promoting opportunities for development.

As nations, we face the challenge of developing in a way that is equitable for the entire population. We want to make the best use of the opportunities that a diverse and rapidly changing world is providing us.

We are aware that a country like Costa Rica has to act decisively to counteract situations that increase disadvantages for some of our citizens, so at the Ministry of Culture and Youth (MCJ) we have been taking measures to reach the largest number of young people possible through various approaches focused on jobs, health, education, art, and citizenship.

We firmly believe that culture is a driving force for development and that the world of culture and art can also contribute to a culture of peace. Because of this, many of our social programs promote artistic activities as tools to keep our young people out of situations of violence.

Early in the 1970s, music in Costa Rica was at a level that was comparable to that of the rest of Central America, perhaps slightly behind Guatemala. But in 1972, newspapers began publishing announcements about auditions for the first Youth Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica (and the first in Latin America).

From that moment on, everything changed. It was the beginning of what we now call the musical revolution in Costa Rica, a time that began to show that art has a positive influence on the lives of young people, and that these types of programs have a positive impact on the country as a whole.

When the program began, it concentrated on bringing professional musicians into the National Symphony Orchestra by: a) recruiting them from other parts of the world (especially the US and Europe); b) hiring these musicians not only to play, but also to teach others to play that instrument; and c) holding auditions for children and young people who would be the first students in the Youth Program (which later became the National Institute of Music).

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The creators of this program did not imagine what a turning point it would be for music in the entire region. The experiment showed results in only ten years. When most of the foreign...